My Fitness Pal

This is embarrassing to admit, but for years, when people would talk about tracking calories, I interpreted it to mean that 1) they only ate in (as in at home), because 2) they would have to measure and weigh every ingredient that would go into every carefully crafted meal that they meticulously prepare to figure out the exact number of calories they're ingesting.  I have no clue where that thought came from, but that was my idea of calorie counting.  So when a colleague told me about a free calorie tracking website called My Fitness Pal, I told her I wasn't interested.  After hearing enough people rave about it, I logged on to check out the website and instantly realized what a dunce I'd been.  If you're not familiar with My Fitness Pal or calorie trackers in general, they are free websites with an extensive nutrition database and simple tools to help you track your daily caloric intake and exercises.  I've found MFP to be very user friendly and easy to access.  It's ridiculous that I didn't hear about it until mid-2011!

Once I downloaded the iPhone app, I no longer needed to write down what I had eaten or remember it until I could get to a computer.  For me, logging as soon as I'm done with a meal or snack ensures that it gets tracked.

When you log in, MFP will tell you how many calories you have remaining (or the total number of calories you have for the day, if you're logging in for the first time that day).  From the home page, you click on

"Add to Diary," where you can designate your meals by Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner or Snacks.

Photo courtesy of My Fitness Pal

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Photo courtesy of My Fitness Pal

I was hooked after seeing that virtually every food I could think of was already in their database.  All I had to do was search for it and I had my choice of numerous options.  Whether my morning glass of OJ is freshly squeezed, frozen, made from concentrate, or artificial, chances are, it's already in the MFP database.

Photo courtesy of My Fitness Pal

Photo courtesy of My Fitness Pal

To add a new food to your Daily Diary, simply click "Add" within your Diary to search the database.  You can easily adjust the number of servings and the serving size, and it will tell you the Nutritional Facts, meaning how many calories, fat, cholesterol, sodium, etc. the particular food item may contain.  Click "Add" again to add it to your diary. And you're done.  Easy peasy.

MFP also logs your exercise and, of course, every type of movement under the sun is already in the database.  Nevertheless, I prefer to log my exercise separately, or not at all.  Here's why:  MFP adds calories burned through exercise to your daily calorie allotment.  So I'm allowed 1,200 calories a day to lose 2 pounds a week.  Most of my exercises consist of cardio, aerobics, or circuit training (I'm not a pilates or yoga type of gal, but I have tried Bikram yoga. More on that in a future post), so on average I burn quite a few calories throughout the day (much to my surprise).  Walking up that hill to work? 35 calories (not accurate. made it up).  Running around my living room to Jillian Michaels? 530 calories (again, made it up).  Well, using this example, my tracker was telling me I had 1,765 calories to eat for the day (my usual 1,200 + 565 burned from exercise).  Not true!  So I opt to log my food only to avoid any calorie overage.

All in all, tracking my calories enables me to make healthier choices.  Before MFP, I could have been eating 2,200 calories a day and I would never know.  I've lost 3 pounds through MFP so far, and I hope to lose even more this year.